Paint on the Pact Sentinel, Fortress of Redemption

Happy holidays to everyone out there that celebrate them!  I managed to get some paint on my Sentinel driver recently.  Normally I say "if you can't reach it with a brush, you can't see it."  This was untrue with the Sentinel, so I left off the cockpit side and roll cage.  Now that the driver is mostly finished, what color should I paint the actual Sentinel?  I think red would wash out and obscure the detail.  I'm sorry almighty Khorne, but there is such thing as too much red.  I'm thinking either black or grey with red chaos stars ala Dave Taylor.  Any thoughts on the color scheme would be appreciated.

Front on. I added shoulderpads and a Maxmini head to the Sentinel driver body.

Left side. I plan on painting the fuel tanks and the exhaust rusty as can be. See my old flamer pics for reference (last pic after the link.)

Right side. He's looking a bit to the right and most of the weapons will be close to level with his line of sight. Seems to work nicely.

And an early Christmas present, the Fortress of Redemption. This thing is massive!

That's my Blood Pact Sentinel down there. See that missile silo?

It's as big as the Sentinel's base!

And now a piece of trivia for those of you who have read this far. I was looking at the detail on the tower of angels and though it seemed softer than the rest of the model. I speculated that GW tested out their new computer scanning cogitator to make this kit. Then I found this tiny little skull in my bits box. (Look at the center of the picture.) It's from the vampire counts skeletons and it looks awfully familiar.

Blood Pact Sentinel and Valkyrie

Needed a break from the usual suspects and so out came a graduation gift (Valkyrie) and a birthday gift (Sentinel).  Never happy with the kit in the box I found some alternate pilot heads in my bits box, built up Vendetta lascannons from landraider lascannons, changed the weapon mount and engine on the sentinel.  On to the pictures!

Here are the Valkyrie/Vendetta crewmen.  Heads from fantasy Brettonian Men-at-Arms, tubing from Dragonforge.  Hmm, I forgot to greenstuff a plug over the point where the tube attaches to their chest.

Modified Sentinel with plasma cannon.  Added imperial guard shoulderpads and a Maxmini head to the pilot, replaced the exausts with fuel tanks and added a muffler.

Here's a shot of the other side.  The muffler is a bit washed out but you get the idea.

Did you notice the weapon had changed in the last picture?  Here's a shot of the magnetized short autocannon.

Yes, I said magnetized.

Blood Pact Officers

Hello dear readers, welcome again to Pick a Damn Army, Blood Pact edition.  Our story today revolves around the command structure of the Blood Pact.  Urlock Gaur is the leader of the Blood Pact, indeed it is to him the pact is made, as initiates cut their hands on the spikes and blades of his armor.  It is thought that lesser ranks are modifications of his holy title.  Demigaur and Etogaur are twoexamples, roughly colonel, and general respectivly.

The latest book by Dan Abnett is conveniently titled Blood Pact and gives us more information on their operations.  For example we se a Damogaur who leads roughly 40 men and has a silver mask, he also deligates orders to his sirdar.  From this I guess Damogaur to roughly equate to captain or lieutenant, while sirdar is likely a sergeant of some type.  This concludes your hypno indoctrination on the Blood Pact for today and without further text, on to the pictures!

Demigaur with powerfist on resin base from Dragonforge.  Note the greenstuff on the powerfist, I will liberally use the gore effect from previous posts and wanted it to have some chunkiness to it.

Here we see the power cable, also available from Dragonforge.

And another angle, showing his distain for the foe.

















Here we see a Damogaur drawing his looted powerblade.  Expect to see a battered and rusted blade with patina on the basket hilt.

From the front.

















From the rear, showing the greenstuffed gap and the powercable running to the sheath.

AT70 BloodPact tank scratch built

Here it is folks, my first attempt at scratchbuilding is done minus the rivets.  It's a Blood Pact AT70 to be used as a "counts as" Leman Russ.

Overall pic, showing off the brass etchings.

Front hull.  Barbette is built up around an IG large road wheel.  Lascannon is magnetized.

Scratchbuilt driver's hatch and viewport.  Still need to fill in the hole from the compass.

Up close and personal.  Spare tracks attached to the front hull.  Hmm, the barbette armor looks a little off center, I'll trim some away from the left.

Side hull with sponson.  

Right rear angle showing off the scratch built shelf, exposed road wheels and brass etch.

Side shot with sponson removed and armor in its place.  The plasticard filling the gap is not quite level, I'll have to adjust that so it looks more like an access panel.

AT70 Detailing

Years of sifting through 40k hobby forums has paid off in the form of obessive detailing on the AT70.  I tried to make it look like its bigger brother, the AT83 (also known as the Mortian pattern tank).  Critiques, comments and suggestions appreciated.

AT70 Reaver with stowage, exhausts, engine access and spare fuel tanks added.

Slightly different angle.  Fuel tanks made by cutting two pieces of large tubing and cutting four strips of thin sheeting to wrap around them, mimicing the AT83 at the bottom of the page.

With the turret rotated you can see the filled gap between the hull and the engine deck.  Use brownstuff instead of greenstuff, as brownstuff can be filed and sanded to smoothness afterwards.

Here you can see how I've used the forgeworld leman russ engine filter to mimic the engine deck of the AT83 Brigand.  The engine cover from a leman russ was cut in half and placed to either side with a strip of plasticard placed on the cut side to complete the frame.  Rivets to be added.

And here's the size comparison shot which was requested last time.  The front of my AT70 still needs detailing, but the aft is done bar the rivets.

AT70 Reaver roughed out

PaDA is proud to present the little brother to the Blood Pact's AT83 Brigand; the AT70 Reaver. Where the Brigand is the Urideshi Forge's equivalent of the Leman Russ, the Reaver is cheaper and lighter. Here's a couple quotes from Honor Guard by Dan Abnett, "Urdeshi made tanks, type AT70s, Indifferent performance and slow on the fire rate. 105-mil as standard." "The main weapons of the AT70s were longer and slimmer than the hefty muzzles of the Imperial Conquerors. Their blasts made higher, shrieking roars and sparked star-shaped gas-burns from the flash-retarders and the ends of their barrels."

In a perfect world the Imperial Guard codex would have light tanks and I could field it as such. Since it doesn't, I'll simply have to make due with fielding it as a Leman Russ and the AT-83 as a Leman Russ with extra armor.

I'm sticking with the book's description of the Reaver's weapons systems: a 105mm main gun (described as smaller than the leman russ') and a hull las-cannon. Note I've cut the track-guards to better resemble a Macharius and a Mort style tank. The vote from two posts ago was 5 for the track guards and 2 for cutting plasticard and scratchbuilding it up to look like the Mort. Well I gave it a try and it didn't work, so the much easier track-guard option will be used.


Here is the rare tank hunting version. I kid, I kid! This was the smaller diameter tubing I glued into the turret to anchor the gun barrel above. This is the smaller tubing before I cut it down, I couldn't resist capturing the ridiculous length.


Top down shows the track guards and the top hatch additions.


With a figure for scale.


Top down view with sponsons.


Angled view with sponsons.

Melta for the melta god! (oh, blood too)

My wedding is over and everyone has recovered, thanks to all those who wished us well!

I was able to get a painting day in with some friends and here are the fruits of that labor:

Pointing meltagunner:


Running meltagunner:


Meltagunner stepping up. I just realized he needs some touch up: strap, eyes and khorne symbol coming up!


Aiming plasmagunner.



Here's my experiments with Tamiya Clear-Red X-27. I found a great blood tutorial on the Bolter and Chainsword. It's quite simple really, there's actually only two steps so I can't recommend it highly enough.

Blood spattered Pacter. One of the great things about the Tamiya Red is that it's glossy, so it stands out even on top of red and black.


Bloody Axe.


Bloody knuckles.


To get the gore effect, just mix a tiny bit of black paint with the tamiya red.


Blood at the front, rust at the back.

Building a Blood Pact Tank

The basic outline of the Blood Pact's AT70 Reaver is finished!

Showing off the Forgeworld Turret and modified driver's compartment.


I tried to match the outline of the Macharius and the Mort tanks. (Yes I know there's only one track guard in place.)


Aft section shows off the forgeworld engine filters to match it to my Mort style AT83 Brigand.


Close up. I'm thinking of creating horizontal slats on either side of the engine and an access door below the rear filter. This would approximate the Mort style AT83. I'd love to add some external fuel tanks but the one from the IG sprue seems too large.


To do: add rivets, hatches and front barbette armor, replace main guns with plastic tubing for battle cannon, add magnets for side sponsons, main gun and barbette weapons, add engine details, get married.

Real live encroaches on the blogging and gaming world: I'm getting married this week! Please excuse any lapse in posting. :)

Infantry, psykers and a tank, oh my

Well it's been a confusing couple of weeks. Record high temperatures made for no-paint days last week. I've also been feeling a little scattered and I think that's because I well and truly violated my BBP (buy-build-paint) method. I was given and purchased about 5 boxes of models beyond what I have done. As a result, this blog post is scattered, but a little bit of everything is better than a lot of nothing eh? The four models with paint are in their ugly stage of washes, they'll be cleaned up to the same standard as the rest, fear not.


Meltagunner signaling his squad forward. His right arm is from the IG tank sprue with a heavy weapon sprue pointing finger. The left arm is a slung lasgun arm from the new command squad box with a meltagun grafted on.


Catachan legs make for a dynamic pose. Meltagun is grafted to cadian lasgun arms.


Meltagunner stepping up onto an unpainted rock. Catachan body, meltagun grafted to flamer right arm.


Plasmagunner takes aim. I'm trying out painting his entire face as part of the grotesk, where before I've painted the nose and area around the eyes as a mask with the lower face in pale caucasian fleshtone. (ref Mr Bad Teeth from an earlier blog.)



This is the start of my AT70 tank. I've turned the leman russ chassis around, chopped off the engine casing and moved it to the side to act as the driver's compartment. A large road wheel acts as the foundation for a front sponson. Still a work in progress, but finally taking shape.


I cut away the bottom of the chimera track guards to expose road wheels and give the illusion of a suspension. To to this I simply used a metal rular and a sharp blade to score the inside of the track-sides just below the point where the road wheel plugs in. I then took my flat edged clippers and clipped along the scored path. Much quicker than scoring repeatedly, or trying to cut deeply enough to go straight through. Cleanup with the side of the blade or a file and they're ready to go. The area with the rectangular hole may hold a side sponson, or may be magnitized for swapping out depending on how easy that turns out to be.

On to the Forgeworld love:

Counts as Primaris Psyker.


Counts as Astropath. Note the added knife on his belt so he's WYSIWYG.


Counts as Naval Officer. Hand swapped for a laspistol and a marauder axe is plugged in to the other. He still needs a press-mold grotesk, but he seems to be missing something else. Any ideas?